Read your exported WhatsApp chats on Android, in an iOS 26 liquid-glass design.
An Android viewer for exported WhatsApp chats, styled after WhatsApp on iOS 26 with liquid and frosted glass. Import a chat, read it as a real conversation, search it, and see who talks the most.
| Chats | Conversation | Jump to date | Pick a year | Insights |
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Light mode on top, dark mode below. The chats in the screenshots are made-up demo data.
WA Backup only reads exports. It cannot send messages or start chats, and imported chats never leave the device.
- Import from WhatsApp's Export chat share sheet, or pick a
.zip/.txtexport. Android and iOS export formats are both supported, with automatic date-order detection. - Chat view with iOS-style bubbles, group sender colours,
*bold*_italic_~strike~, links, edited and deleted labels, and day separators. - Media: photos and videos inline with a zoomable viewer, playable voice notes, documents, and a media/docs grid. Attachments missing from the export show a placeholder instead of a broken line.
- Search: search every imported chat from the Chats screen, or search inside a chat with a results list and next/previous matches. A calendar jumps to any day that has messages: swipe between months, or tap the month to pick a year and month.
- Insights: message counts, active days, busiest day, streaks, peak hours, an activity label per person (very active to barely talks), reply speed, who starts conversations, the strongest reply pairs, and charts by hour, weekday and month.
- Liquid glass UI: floating glass buttons, tab pill, search capsule, frosted sheets and alerts, and a blurred scroll edge. Light, dark or follow-system.
- Haptics: a soft tick on every touch, and light ticks while you scrub the insight charts. Follows the system touch-feedback setting.
- In-app updates from this repository's GitHub releases.
Download the latest wa-backup-<version>.apk from Releases, allow installs from your browser, and open it. Android 8.0 or later; real blur needs Android 12 or later.
- Open the chat in WhatsApp.
- Tap ⋮ › More › Export chat.
- Choose Include media to keep photos, voice notes and documents.
- Pick WA Backup in the share sheet.
Requires JDK 17+ and the Android SDK (compileSdk 37).
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest :app:assembleReleaseRelease builds are signed with the key described in ~/.wa-backup-signing/keystore.properties (storeFile, storePassword, keyAlias, keyPassword). Without that file they fall back to the debug key, and in-app updates will not install over them.
python scripts/release.py app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk <versionName> <versionCode> notes.txtThe script creates the v<versionName> release, uploads the APK and wa-backup.json, and publishes it as the latest release. The app checks releases/latest/download/wa-backup.json at most once an hour, verifies the download's SHA-256, package and version, and then hands it to the system installer.
WA Backup is a private, offline WhatsApp chat backup viewer for Android. It opens the .txt and .zip files from WhatsApp's Export chat, shows them like the real app, and adds search, a date picker and chat statistics. Nothing is uploaded: there is no account, no server and no analytics.
Keywords: WhatsApp backup viewer, WhatsApp export reader, WhatsApp chat viewer, open WhatsApp .txt export, WhatsApp chat analyzer, WhatsApp chat statistics, chat insights, offline chat archive, iOS 26 liquid glass, Android, Kotlin, Jetpack Compose.
WA Backup is an independent project and is not affiliated with WhatsApp or Meta.